A Borrower's Plea: Supreme Court Rejects Biden's Student Debt Plan, for Now

The Supreme Court has put on hold the latest plan from the Biden administration to lower payments for millions of borrowers, pending the outcome of lawsuits making their way through lower courts. The plan aimed to provide a faster path to loan cancellation and reduce monthly income-based repayments from 10% to 5% of a borrower's discretionary income. The plan would have also waived payments for borrowers who earn less than 225% of the federal poverty line, which is $32,800 a year for a single person. The Supreme Court's conservative majority previously rejected an earlier plan that would have wiped away more than $400 billion in student loan debt.

The cost estimates of the new plan vary, with Republican-led states challenging the plan pegging the cost at $475 billion over 10 years, while the administration cites a Congressional Budget Office estimate of $276 billion. Two separate legal challenges to the plan are making their way through federal courts, with judges in Kansas and Missouri issuing separate rulings that blocked much of the administration's plan. However, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that allowed the department to proceed with a provision allowing for lower monthly payments.

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